Communication systems are often used to convene a call or meeting of a group of people. Often an organizer of a meeting must make repeated calls, each inviting a single called party, in order to organize a meeting. The recipient receives little or no indication of the reason for the call, or any urgency associated with it. If available, the calling line ID (CLID, or “Caller ID”) or calling-name ID (CNID) may be displayed, and this may be recognized by the caller, but the context of the call is not available before answering or declining the call. The called party has limited flexibility in responding to the call: current systems allow the called party to accept (answer) the call; to ignore the call (silence the ringer); or to redirect the call “to treatment” (e.g. to a voicemail system, or perhaps to an assistant's line).
The calling party likewise receives little or no indication of the reason for the recipients “response”. The calling party can distinguish acceptance (i.e, the called party answers) from rejection (e.g. voicemail, busy signal or simply no answer), but not the reason for rejection. Has the recipient looked at the call ID and chosen to ignore the call as they believe it is a lower priority to their current activity? Or are they truly not available (and/or not even aware of the call attempt?). This distinction can be important; for example, in high priority/emergency situations, knowing whether somebody can be reached via some interruption mechanism (e.g., calling their assistant) can be useful in deciding whether to continue attempts at reaching them, or whether an attempt to find an alternate is called for. In some cases being routed to someone's voicemail is worse than a busy signal, as the caller needs to wait for the voice mail system to answer, and is thus delayed from moving to the next viable candidate. Note that some “messaging” systems allow a user to define or direct a treatment for an incoming call. For example, if they are going to lunch, a user can elect to have their calls forwarded to their cell phone, or their voicemail. However, the calling party has no way of knowing this.
Moreover, the calling party has no mechanism available to explain the context of the call to influence or assist the called party in deciding how to respond.
In many situations, assembly of a group of skilled staff is required. As the participants often have varying schedules and different locales (especially for large campuses), assembling such a team can be problematic. In some circumstances, it is not necessary to assemble a group of specific individuals, provided a group with appropriate skills can be assembled. For example in healthcare and first-response situations, rapid assembly of a group of participants with skills appropriate to a class of emergency is critical. In such circumstances, quickly assembling an ad-hoc team with the right skills may be preferable to more slowly assembling a group of preferred (e.g., pre-designated) individuals.
Many institutions use paging systems (both the traditional loud-speaker type, as well as via a wireless pager), ‘all-hands’ radio broadcasts and the like to contact all staff and have them respond. However, such systems are inefficient and disruptive, especially to patients in a hospital who may be trying to sleep. Also, such approaches often either do not result in a complete team with the proper balance of skills, or result in redundant respondents. Moreover, except for situations where team composition is prearranged (and therefore inflexible), systems typically rely on manual lists and mechanisms (and sometimes even manual callouts), which adversely affects the timeliness of team formation.
Other media for assembling a call or meeting include instant messaging (IM), email, and paging systems. While IM generally demonstrates rapid delivery, paging and email systems can introduce delays. IM and email systems offer greater facility for delivering contextual information, but in general none of the three have good delivery-confirmation mechanisms. Email systems can offer read receipts, but these are not always reliable.
Moreover, existing IM, paging, and email systems all employ different addressing and access mechanisms, requiring the caller to select an alternative without information regarding the called party's currently preferred choice of communications mechanism. Furthermore, while using these systems can notify recipients of a call or meeting they are typically not capable of facilitating the a conference call itself, thus requiring two sets of communication devices (or at least applications).
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a communication system better suited for collaborations.